REVIEW: The Irresistible Urge to Fall for Your Enemy by Brigitte Knightley

I have received an Advance Reader's Copy of this book through the publisher. This has not affected my rating or review in any way.

Thank you to Berkley for sending me an Advance Reader’s Copy of The Irresistible Urge to Fall for Your Enemy!

Maybe I'm delulu, but I think Berkley loves me or something. (If you know anything about Berkley Publishing, you know how hard it is to receive an Advance Reader's Copy of a book of theirs, let alone two.) Either way, my ARC game has been insane lately, and I'm very happy and proud to have gotten to read this early.

Adapted from the Dramione (the popular ship of characters Draco Malfoy and Hermione Granger from the Harry Potter series) fanfiction, Draco Malfoy and the Mortifying Ordeal of Being In Love, Brigitte Knightley has reworked the Wizarding World into a Great Britan-inspired fantasy world full of dry humor and a romance that puts the slow in slow-burn. The Irresistible Urge to Fall for Your Enemy follows healer Aurienne and assassin Osric as they are forced to work together at the height of a deadly magical plague.

Unfortunately, this disappointed me in more ways than one.

The main aspect of this disappointment very thing that makes this book interesting: it is a fanfiction. As a fanfiction reader and semi-former writer myself, I understand that fanfiction gives the writer a distinct advantage of not having to craft the characters or build the world yourself. Some books that were formerly fanfiction are able to build upon this when becoming an original work and develop characters and worlds that no longer resemble their source material (for example: The Love Hypothesis by Ali Hazelwood, which was formerly a Star Wars fanfiction, does not remotely resemble its source material).

In The Irresistible Urge to Fall for Your Enemy, this doesn't exactly work. The plot itself went through the most changes during the publishing process, as I've come to understand, but I was entertained enough to keep reading. However, it is very obvious that Aurienne and Osric are Hermione and Draco with new names, as their personalities and many traits are extremely similar. I will say the pair had great chemistry and banter despite that, and it was my favorite part of the story. I was also able to tell most of which secondary characters were meant to be whom, simply by the role they played in the story. It was something hard to ignore throughout, and as much as I tried to keep myself from comparing the two, I was constantly wondering what terms were changed from the Harry Potter series and what were original ideas.

Speaking of original ideas, it didn't seem that Knightley didn't bother to do much crafting of an original world in the publishing process, either. We're told that the story is set in London, but not much beyond that. Is it set in the present day, or maybe an alternative version of present day? Maybe the 1800s? It could even be set in the distant future for all I know. On top of that, the magic system is designed and explained poorly. Countless strange, made-up words are thrown at you in the first number of chapters, and you're meant to take the punches and roll with them. There's no glossary in the back of the book either, but there is a handy pronunciation guide which is no help at all on this matter. This aspect was the most frustrating to me, as I would be enjoying a scene then ripped out of it by my inability to understand certain terms or phrases that the author should have elaborated on.

Knightley's writing style was also a huge indicator of this not having many changes from the fanfiction. It's one I've read many times before, a mix of millennial humor with an attempt at supercilious prose--like the humor of Hannah Nicole Maehrer's Assistant to the Villain meets Stephanie Garber's writing style (but more tolerable). I would say that the humor worked for me majority of the way through, specifically the banter between the two main characters as I mentioned before, with a few offhand moments leaving me cringing. I would recommend this to fans of the Assistant to the Villain series--though that one worked for me more due to the innovative characters and medieval-inspired land combined with the humor. Here, humor alone is not enough to save the lack of worldbuilding and characterization.

Though I may have never read the original fanfiction, I can tell you one thing: this is probably a phenomenal work of fanfiction, but a low-quality original story simply for being too entangled in another fictional universe. I didn't hate this, I was engaged the entire time and will probably pick up the sequel if I'm in the mood for some dry, millennial humor. With everything said, I give The Irresistible Urge to Fall for Your Enemy a generous 3 out of 5 stars.

The Irresistible Urge to Fall for Your Enemy will be available on July 8th, 2025.

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